Terra, Interactive One Strike Ad Sales, Content Pact

Hispanic-focused Web portal Terra USA has joined forces with Interactive One—a media company that manages the social networking property MiGente.com—in a three-year ad sales and content partnership.

As part of the deal, Terra will take overall ad sales responsibilities for the MySpace-like MiGente.com, which is aimed primarily at bilingual second- and third-generation U.S. Hispanics. According to Terra USA CEO Fernando Rodriguez, the combination of Terra’s 2.5 million unique U.S. users and MiGente’s 1 million monthly uniques and 3.2 million registered users will help attract advertisers interested in scale. “That should put us ahead of most in the category,” Rodriguez said.

Terra’s expertise in the U.S. Hispanic market should be a boost for MiGente, which was previously sold by Interactive One, a media conglomerate, which includes properties like Black Planet and Giant Digital. “We’ll provide a much more focused sales effort,” Rodriguez said. “In the past, [Interactive One’s] focus was the general American market. It was a second-tier offering.”

In addition to ad sales, Terra will provide exclusive English- and some Spanish-language content to MiGente, including news, sports, entertainment and celebrity interviews.

Rodriguez believes this distribution deal will introduce Terra’s content to new users and isn’t concerned that it might diminish Terra’s own traffic. “The world has changed,” he said. “In this day and age, we’d rather have people looking at Terra content even if they’re not on Terra. We think we’ll eventually circulate traffic back and forth.”

Besides the new ad/content partnership, Terra has announced it will on April 7 relaunch its Terra TV video platform, aiming to offer a more personalized and social viewing experience. Also on the video front, the portal has announced plans to begin streaming live footage from music artist’s Gloria Estefan Latin American tour starting April 9.

That live concert footage is being packaged as part of what will become a new regular video series dubbed Terra on Tour. For the remainder of the Estefan tour (and hopefully others to follow, said Rodriguez), Terra on Tour will provide viewers with behind-the-scenes video clips filmed by Estefan and her team, exclusive interviews and photos; and blog postings. Users who attend these concerts in person will also be encouraged to share comments and photos on the site.

Rodriguez said: “We’re looking to create more exclusive content opportunities for Terra, and music is one of our pillars.”